As the sunny day passes, I am reading one of the finest books ever written, The Star Diaries, written by my personal hero, Stanislaw Lem. When I pause to look at the news headlines, it is always a shock to see the self-righteous proclamations of our planet’s filthiest criminal scum served up alongside tidings of supposed religious niceness in the form of Easter rituals. Cannot people simply observe and enjoy the coming of a warmer season and the crossing of the Equinox without all this medievalist claptrap?

As the case may be, I would like to share the amusing testimony of Iridian delegate to the United Planets Congress, delivered during the Eighth Voyage of our intrepid hero, Ijon Tichy, as recorded in Lem’s fabulous book. The Iridian’s comments are made apropos of Earthlings being nominated for membership in the UP, and he provides evidence of the exact origins of the human race, including the truth behind their erroneous belief that humans are somehow the creation of a higher being. In fact, we are told, life on Earth was not the result of divine plans, but rather was perpetrated as a cruel joke by the kitchen steward of a spaceship which happened to touch down on that barren and lifeless planet…

“Now here we are approached by creatures that have no inkling of the true odiousness of their existence, nor any knowledge of its cause! Now here they come knocking at the venerable door of this Worthy Assembly, and what then, pray, are we to tell them, all these abominoids, freaksnouts, clenchpoops, corpse-lovers, mothereaters and addlepates, wringing their alleged hands and falling to their alleged knees when they learn that in reality they belong to the subphylum ‘Artefacta,’ and that their supreme and perfect creator was some ship’s cook, who once poured out upon the rocks of a dead planet a bucket of fermented slops, for his own amusement imparting to the wretched source of life properties which later would make it the laughing stock of an entire Galaxy!”